The Divine Clothing Symbol Analysis

Beyond merely representing the six days of creation and the Sabbath, the special outfits that Syme, his companions, and Sunday receive at the end of the novel also symbolize their decision to trade moral relativism for religion. The novel explicitly describes the outfits’ biblical symbolism: for instance, Monday’s black cloak with a white stripe represents God creating light on the first day, while Syme’s blue costume with a sun icon represents God creating the sun and moon on the fourth day. But when they put on these outfits, the six detectives and Sunday find that they suddenly fill clear, definitive roles in the universe.

Beforehand, when the detectives were chasing the anarchist conspiracy, everything was in question for them—they didn’t know whether their mission was real, who was good and evil, or whether good and evil really existed at all. In other words, they were considering moral relativism—or the idea that there is no single set of absolute moral values in the universe. This idea was increasingly popular in Chesterton’s era, especially as artists and writers spread secular values to replace waning religious ones. But Chesterton’s protagonists find moral relativism to be unbearable and the moral certainty of religion to be a relief. This is why the narrator describes their new clothing as “disguises that did not disguise, but reveal”—the protagonists finally found their true identities when, rather than trying to set moral values for themselves, they accepted religion and agreed to fit into their God-given roles instead.